CHAPTER 19
At first, Dan thought he heard things as he stood out in the kitchen, frying bacon in a skillet. The second knock on the door proved to him he wasn’t. It was nine a.m., and outside his kitchen window, the snow was falling thickly, covering the quaint town of Alexandria. He pulled the skillet off the burner and turned off the stove, hoping against hope that it was Sloan knocking on his door.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw her standing outside. She looked drowsy, but her gray eyes were clear, and her skin was no longer stretched across her cheekbones. Her hair was loose, somewhat tousled, and she looked delicious in black velour track pants that flowed loosely around those long legs of hers. She wore a lime green long-sleeved tee and a black velour hoodie over it. In her hands, she held a wrapped gift. He pushed the door aside.
“I’m here for that omelet you promised me last night,” she said, smiling tentatively.
“Come on in.” Her smile sizzled through him, and he stepped aside, allowing her into the condo.
“I got up an hour and a half ago,” she apologized. “I slept the sleep of the dead.”
Closing the door, Dan said, “I don’t doubt it. You look good this morning, though. Do you feel better?” He could smell the shampoo she’d used to wash her recently dried hair, probably coconut, which he knew she loved. There were so many things he knew about Sloan, and he’d replayed all of them last night as he lay alone in his king-sized bed.
“I feel like I’m going to live,” she admitted. She held out the gift toward him. “It’s not much, but I wanted to bring this back with me from Ethiopia for you. Merry Christmas.”
He took the brightly wrapped package, their fingers grazing one another. “You didn’t have to do this, Sloan.”
“I wanted to.”
Dan placed it on the coffee table. “How about I open it after we have that omelet I promised you?”
“I’d like that.”
“Come on in,” he invited, wanting to touch her, kiss her, take her into his arms and never, ever let her go. He resisted. Barely. “Would you like some coffee?”
Groaning, she followed him into the kitchen. “I’d love some, thanks.”
Dan knew how she liked her coffee. “Have a seat at the kitchen table. You can watch me make our omelet while you drink.”
“You’re spoiling me.”
“You deserve to be spoiled, Sloan.” He wanted to spoil her for the rest of their lives if only she’d give him one last chance. He saw the longing in her eyes and this time, he knew he wasn’t seeing things. He swallowed hard and walked back to the stove, turning on the burner and sliding the skillet into place over the flame.
“You have good timing,” he told her. “I was throwing together some bacon, tomatoes, fresh basil leaves, and feta cheese for my omelet. Sound good to you?”
“Does it ever,” she said, appreciating the strong, hot coffee she held between her hands. “It looks like you’ve gained back some weight since getting wounded. Sloan was starved for information about Dan. He looked so damned sexy in those jeans, the hard curve of his thighs, the erection she saw pushing against his zipper. Dan wanted her. That sent a ribbon of blazing heat through her, her nipples tightening, remembering his mouth worshiping them, sending her spinning into a world of satisfaction and need for more of him.
“I’ve gained back ten pounds.” Dan busied himself, glad that he’d put on Christmas music once again. Hope threaded through him as he made the huge omelet and divided it, placing it on two dark green plates. There was a new, profound sense of peace that filled him simply because she was at the table, drinking her coffee. He didn’t mind if they didn’t talk. Just having her presence was a gift of monumental importance to him.
The toast popped up, and he transferred the slices to another plate. He brought over the omelets and the toast. Taking out the butter and strawberry jam from the fridge, he set them in front of her.
“Want to do the honors and butter our toast?”
“Sure,” she murmured, giving him a warm look. “I didn’t realize how much of a hausfrau you are, Dan.”
He snorted, retrieving the silverware from a drawer. “I learned early on how to make breakfast for myself.” He saw sudden sympathy come to her eyes as she quickly buttered their toast. “Sorry,” he mumbled, “I didn’t mean to go there.”
“It’s all right,” she soothed, her voice choked with emotion. “I’ve always wanted to know more about you, Dan.”
Grimacing, he sat down at her elbow after pouring himself some coffee. “Some things are better left buried. I’m not proud of what happened.”
Sloan bit back her sympathetic comment. She wanted this breakfast to be happy, not torn up with bad memories from his past. Dan had too many already. She didn’t want to drag him down into it this morning. “Well,” she said, pretending a brightness she didn’t feel, “this omelet looks delicious.”
“Hungry?” he asked adding salt and pepper to his omelet.
“Starved.”
He heard a quaver in her husky voice, saw the desire in her eyes. Sloan ate like she was starved. “You look like you’ve lost some weight,” he noted midway through their meal. “Have you?”
“Yes. That’s pretty normal for me when I’m on an assignment in a third-world country. I always bring my junk food over with me, but then I run out, and I’m eating what everyone else eats.”
“I know that one.” A grin leaked from one corner of his mouth. Dan absorbed her warming presence, wanting to have every morning just like this one. His heart ached with anguish because he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He had no one but himself to blame for the situation and the outcome.
“It’s so beautiful outside,” she said, poking her fork in the direction of the huge picture window in the living room. “I really looked forward to coming home. I love snow.”
“I was going over at noon to the local mission in Alexandria,” he confided. “I don’t like Christmas for a lot of reasons, but I like to do something that helps those who have less than I do.”
She gave him a thoughtful look. “Could you use a partner, Dan? I’d love to do that with you. I believe in giving back at this time of year, too. It’s the least I can do.”
Surprised, he blinked once, assimilating her request. “Aren’t you whipped from that flight?”
“Yes, but so what? I work tired, too.” She finished off her omelet and slathered the jam across one piece of toast. “Do you not want me to come with you? I’m okay if you don’t.”
“Yes, I’d like your company,” he stumbled, pushing his empty plate aside. “I guess I didn’t think you’d want to be around me for that kind of time, Sloan.” He saw her eyes grow dark, avoiding his look.
“I came home to see you, Dan.” Her voice lowered. “I needed to come clean with you, to tell you the rest of what I’ve been hiding from you.” She sighed wearily, giving him a tender look. “I’m just as culpable in this on-again, off-again relationship of ours. “I didn’t lie to you, but I wasn’t forthcoming because of the investigation that I had to do to clear your name.”
Sitting back, he studied her intently. “Then let’s talk this out?”
Nodding, she pushed the chair back and said, “Yes. Sit with me on the couch?”
Here it came. Dan tried to steel himself against what he knew was coming. He followed her, and like the night before, they each took a corner of the sofa, facing one another, a good four feet between them. It might as well have been the Grand Canyon to him because he desperately wanted to reach Sloan, tell her how much he cared for her. He couldn’t use the word love, frustrated by his lack of experience with it—and that was his fault, too. He never allowed any woman close to him. Except she had somehow melted through all his barriers, dissolved the shield that protected his heart. And now, he lamented as never before his past behavior because he’d stolen so much from her, but also, from himself.
“When you voluntarily left my home two months ago, I started to ask myself a lot of questions, Dan.” Her voice grew strained. “I knew about the investigation. I never told you about it, and it made me feel guilty, but you were wounded, and I wasn’t about to bring it up then. I asked Tal to send me to Ethiopia because I needed the time away from you. When I’m with you, Dan, I can’t think straight. I’m so hungry for you in every way.”
“Yeah, there’s no question we’re good together in bed, Sloan. But that wasn’t our issue, was it?”
“No, it wasn’t. But by the same token, with you living with me and me being your caregiver, I felt so many more things for you. And you have to admit, your charisma is powerful and I have always thrived beneath it. I did at Bagram, despite the rules you laid down for me.”
“And you fell in love with me, anyway.”
She sobered. “Yes, I did. I never didn’t love you even after you walked out of my life.”
“But then?” he offered, his heart shredding with anguish, “there was this other layer of wondering whether I was an alcoholic like my old man.”
She sighed and sat up, a low urgency in her voice. “Dan, I never believed that of you. I took that mission from Tal to clear your name. I didn’t know how I could do it. All I knew is that I wanted to. And at the time, I didn’t know the rest of the story about why you’d left me at Bagram.”
“But even without that piece of intel,” he said roughly, “you had my back.”
“Because I loved you, Dan.”
“But I broke your heart again. I told you why I’d left.”
Shaking her head, she forced her emotions to ramp down. “I was stunned by the information. I couldn’t think clearly at the time. I needed to go away and feel my way through everything you’d told me.” She rubbed her brow, giving him a searching look. “And I had questions for you. Important ones. Ones that only you could answer.”
“Like what?” he asked.
She rubbed her hand down her thigh. “Like the real reason you couldn’t tell me why you were walking away.”
“I told you, Sloan, I had too much damned pride to tell you the truth.”
“Did you want to, though?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t go there.
“You should have given me a chance to make that decision, Dan. It wasn’t up to you, but given where you were at with women at the time, it was probably pretty clear cut with you. You weren’t going to trust me enough to come to me and give me the whole story. And you didn’t know I’d fallen in love with you. That was one of your rules: I could never say those words to you. I could never speak of what lay in my heart for you because you were afraid of ever getting involved in a real relationship.”
“You’re right. But you’re wrong about something, Sloan. I did trust you. Whatever we had at Bagram was the best I’d ever had with any woman. Yes, you respected my rules, you put up with me, but something…something happened to me when I was around you. It got so that I couldn’t wait to be with you, love you, share our talks after having sex.” His voice grew hoarse. “Whatever we shared? It was the best I’ve ever experienced. It damn near killed me to walk away from you. And honestly? I never recovered from it. I couldn’t see how you would want to still be around me after that. I was a loser in my head. How could you want a loser in your life?”
“You were never a loser in my eyes. Even when we met again in Sudan, you had always been a brave hero to me.”
“And now?” he growled. “Now that you know everything about me? Am I still that hero you built me up to be?”
“I never stopped loving you, Dan. Not even now. You will always be a hero in my eyes. Have you made mistakes? Yes. Have I? Yes. Because you never allowed a woman to get close to you, you didn’t understand the ups and downs of being in a real relationship. That’s why you keep telling me you don’t know what love is. If you didn’t have it growing up, how can you know what it is? Your mother left, and she was the only one giving you any kind of love and affection. The rest of the time you were imprinted with an uncaring alcoholic father.”
Dan straightened, taking a deep breath. “I can’t be something I’m not, Sloan.”
“What? You can’t fall in love? Just because you don’t think you know what love is doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling it or that it isn’t drawing you back to me. Because I know, in your way, you do love me. I know because I’ve been in love before and I know the signs, the way two people gravitate to one another, the good things they share even through the bad times.”
“I can’t offer you anything other than what you see right now,” he said heavily.
“Dan? It’s one thing to deliberately hurt another person. You never did that to me. You’re overlaying your lack of love and affection from your family onto me. It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t mean you can’t love. You do love me, and I damn well know it.”
“How do you know this? I have feelings, deep feelings for you. I know how important it is for a woman to hear the man say he loves her. Jesus, all I’ve given you is pain. And suffering. How do you know you still love me?”
“Love chooses the person. My mind didn’t choose you. My heart fell for you. I knew it was love because I’d experienced different levels of loving another person before. What I feel for you has no bottom. It has no sides to it. I’ve loved you through some pretty bad times. Even I wondered what the hell was wrong with me for hanging in there with you. How could I continue to love a man who thought he was incapable of loving another human being? And yet, I saw you, Dan. No matter how much your terrible childhood ran you, the many losses you suffered through, I saw you. That’s the man I’ve loved to this day.”
Tears drifted down her cheeks. “It took me two months to figure this all out, to realize that you’re the one I want in my life. And it’s fine if you can’t say you love me. You show me in a hundred small, but important, ways every day. You have loved me like no other man ever has, despite your shortcomings in other areas.”
Dan slowly rose, looking down at her. “I don’t know how you can still love me, Sloan.”
She uncurled from the couch. Walking over to him, she slid her hand into his, searching his anguished features. “The heart doesn’t have to have a logical reason. Let me show you? Let me teach you what love is? I don’t ever need to hear that you love me. Love is so many things on so many levels, large and small, every day. Come to bed with me? Let me love you? And you share what you can of your heart with me in return? I’ll be satisfied with that.”
“You’ve got more courage than anyone I’ve ever known, baby. I don’t deserve this second chance. I promise you, Sloan, I’m trying every day to become the man you deserve, not the one you got that first time around.”
“I know that. That’s why I came back, why I want to try one last time with you. You love me enough to try to make our relationship work for both of us.”
“That’s all I need to know,” he rasped, and he leaned down, tenderly taking her lips, feeling her respond, pressing herself against him, their hips meeting, the heat flaring urgently through him. She was going to take no prisoners this time, and elation swept through him, erasing all his anxiety. Sloan was giving him a chance to care for her just as he’d dreamed of doing. She called it love. He called it care.
*
The morning light drifted through the half-opened curtains in Dan’s bedroom. The bed was made, and she smiled to herself. Dan’s military discipline and organization still ruled his life in some ways. In boot camp, everyone was taught to make their bunk.
He turned, shutting the door. “First things first,” he told her. “A condom.”
“Not a chance today. I’m in my clear period, Dan.” She saw his eyes gleam with satisfaction. Dan hated wearing a condom, and she didn’t care for them either when they could get away with it.
“Good to know.”
She grinned. “Don’t gloat.”
He slid his hands beneath her velour jacket, easing it off her shoulders. “I’m gloating, okay?”
Her skin lit up as his fingers grazed her flesh. He placed the jacket over a chair in the corner and came back to her, somber.
“How long has it been for you?”
“Two years.”
“You were small and tight when I slipped my fingers into you before. We’re going to take this easy, then.”
Her lips curved and she lifted the shirt up and over his head, taking pleasure in the dusting of dark hair across his chest. Dropping the shirt to the carpeted floor, she gently grazed the pink scar that had fully healed along his left side. She felt around for any swelling, gently palpating the region, seeing if he winced or tensed. He did not.
“Doc,” he growled, “I’m a hundred percent. Don’t be looking at my scar and deciding we can’t have any sex.”
“Just want to make sure.”
“I’m fine,” he ground out, slipping his hands beneath her tee. “You’re not wearing a bra, Sloan.”
She laughed, running her hands across his thick shoulders, feeling his strength and warmth beneath her fingertips. “You know I never wore one at Bagram. Why look so surprised about it now?”
“You know how to make a man hard in a split second. You always did. I will never get enough of you,” he rasped, sliding his hands around her warm breasts, hearing her moan, her fingers digging into his upper arms, telling him she welcomed his touch. The moment he moved his thumbs languidly across those hardened pink nipples, she nearly collapsed against him.
“You’re starving again, aren’t you, baby?” He licked her earlobe, hearing her gasp with delight. He could already smell her sex scent, knowing full well she was juicy, the rich, delicious honey aroma of her body spilling out of her entrance as he continued to lavish her nipples. Sloan’s eyes shuttered closed, and he heard that hum in her throat, telling him he was pleasing her. That made him feel so damn strong. His heart was in the mix because he didn’t want her to collapse on the floor if he teased her too much too soon. He wanted her in his bed with him.